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National Pizza Month: These Pizza Shops are Making an Impression

Oct 12, 2021

One thing the pandemic has made certain; we’re not sure what to expect with the new normal. Adapting to new rules and regulations has fostered creative solutions and recent trends. The restaurant industry, in particular, has suffered many blows.

However, one portion of the restaurant industry that has continued to grow is pizza. While the number of diners who ate in restaurants went down, pizza shops have seen increased orders. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a fresh, hot pizza? Even low-cost pizzas are good; they are delicious hot or cold, easy to clean up, and you can savor any topping you like.

 

pizza success
Pizza shops have been resilient throughout the pandemic

 

It remains to be seen if local pizzerias will be able to compete against well-known giant chains like Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, or Domino’s Pizza. Restaurants like Papa John’s saw a 28 percent rise in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same time the year before. To keep up with this demand, they have 20,000 additional staff with plans to hire 10,000 more.

Pizza Hut has seen some of its best sales during the same time. In fact, they saw their most significant delivery and carry-out sales than in the previous eight years. This is an incredible increase, considering the fact that they have been underperforming for a few years.

However, few pizza chains have been as successful as Domino’s Pizza. According to Bloomberg, Domino’s is up at least 33 percent in 2021, a number that surpassed Wall Street estimates.

 

How Domino’s Kept Growing

The pandemic triggered many things, including changing daily habits and behaviors. One such behavior includes staying home and ordering contact-less delivery. In many ways, Domino’s took stock of the situation and made the best of it.

Unlike other pizza chains, Domino’s never partnered with third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, Door Dash, or Grubhub. In addition, Domino’s created convenient, customer-friendly ordering apps, so customers could easily customize their toppings and even be notified when their pizza was out for delivery.

Convenience and comfort are crucial elements to customer satisfaction—and business survival.

 

pizza industry
Domino’s Pizza made convenience a priority issue to tackle

 

Other pizza shops may be interested in noting these business models. After all, third-party delivery apps are known to tack on hefty fees, making it hard for restaurants to retain revenue. By investing in your own, company-owned delivery infrastructure, you get more control—and more profits.

If food delivery services continue to grow, customers will be interested in value as much as quality. Delivery services often include hefty delivery and service fees to the customer, making ordering dinner for a large family regularly cost-prohibitive.

By eliminating these unnecessary and costly fees, you and your pizza shop stand a good chance of surviving the rise and fall of industry trends.

 

Pizza Created in the Synergy Test Kitchen

 

Pizza Created in the Synergy Test Kitchen
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Mozza may be the best pizzeria in LA

Oct 17, 2010

I tend to write a lot of posts on pizza because we know and love pizza. We at Synergy have tenaciously studied the nuances of making a quality and delicious pies so that we can become the pizza experts. Just a few weeks ago, we wrote an article describing our pizza mission we took with our client, browsing some of the best concepts in California. I wanted to dedicate a single post just for one of my favorite pizza restaurants, Pizzeria Mozza brought to you by famed chefs, Mario Batali, Nancy Silverton, and Joseph Bastianich.

When we assess restaurants, what really stands out in our minds is that one thing that a restaurant excels in, or in other words, what a restaurant is known for. Whether it’s amazing marinara sauce or perfectly seasoned halibut, a restaurant must make a distinctive statement. At Mozza, I believe it’s all about their delicious crust—a crispy exterior and soft interior, the quality and flavor is superb, where many other restaurants simply leave the aspect of the pizza as an afterthought. What do you look for in a pizza?

Check out our photos from our visit to Mozza

for more information about some of the best Pizza in the country, call Synergy.

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Taking pizza to a whole new level

Sep 15, 2010

A few months ago I wrote a blog entry stating that I believe that pizza will be the next big thing. About a week after posting the article I was inundated with phone calls from perspective clients all over the world who now want to open a chain of pizza restaurants.

My new clients are from Italy and while they are very knowledgeable about the different styles of pizza including Roma, Napoli and Sicilian they had a very different concept in mind that required us to expose them to a whole new level of thinking and visiting restaurants that very few people knew about.

Our team and clients started eating pizza at 11:00 AM up in LA with the first stop being PitFire Pizza whose motto is, “the Crust You Can Trust” and then on to Vito’s and then Mozza (which happens to be my favorite). After we left LA we headed to La Dolce, Upper Crust Pizza, Pizza Bakery and Urban Coal Fired in San Diego and called it a day around 11:00 PM.

The next day we headed to San Francisco where we had an appointment with Tony Gemignani who is a 9 Time World Pizza Champion and president of the World Pizza Champions Inc., the most winning pizza team in the world. Tony is the first competitor in pizza history to win both acrobatic and baking titles in Italy’s Championships. Tony was the Neapolitan Champion at the 2007 World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy for the Best STG Neapolitan Pizza Margherita. Tony is also the only Two Time Food Network Gold Medalist and is a certified master from the Scuola Italiana Pizzaioli. He is the author of the cookbook PIZZA and is inducted into the Guinness Book of World records. Tony has won more World tiles and international awards than any competitor in history. If we were ever going to learn anything new about pizza Tony G was our man.

Being from New York and having traveled all over Italy I thought I knew a few things about pizza but after our 3 hour lunch with Tony it made me keenly aware that there was a lot more to know about pizza than buying 000 flour, fermentation and using a wood oven for baking. Tony serves five different types of pizza using five different style doughs and cooks the pizza in different ovens ranging from gas, electric, coal and wood fired and even a retroflex depending upon the style of pizza he is coking. We ordered ten or more different pies with toppings to really understand the nuances of the art of pizza making. We could hardly move after eating so much pizza but we somehow mustered up the energy to finish our pizza eating journey.

From Tony’s we moved on to A16, then to Delphina and 00 which is a new restaurant. Delphina and 00 were great experiences and served delicious pizza but nothing will ever equal 3 hours of nonstop pizza eating with Tony Gemigani who takes pizza to a whole new level. Pizza and flatbreads are both popular and very profitable. If you want to explore ways of incorporating pizza or flat breads on to your menu give us a call.

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New restaurant Via Napoli serves up gourmet pizza at Epcot

Sep 13, 2010

Everyday throngs of families flock to Disney World, the “Happiest Place on Earth,” to experience the magical shows and attractions. Aside from this, however, fine dining at the Epcot center is gaining the attention of many.

Nestled in the Italy Pavillion at Epcot, Via Napoli is the park’s newest food attraction. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill pizza joint. Via Napoli is a 300-seat restaurant serving up gourmet pizza pies from oak wood-burning ovens each one named after the three volcanoes in Italy, Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli (check out the photos below to see the clever artistic design of each oven). These ovens burn at a lava-like heat of 700 degrees!

by rickpilot_2000, on Flickr

Famed restaurant, Nick Valenti, spent time in Naples studying the art of creating authentic Nepolitan pizzas to ensure that Via Napoli would bring back those flavors for its guests. This included examining all the details of the dough, sauce, crust and oven temperatures used in creating the perfect pie. The innovation in new pizza concepts continue to grow as more restaurants such as Via Napoli, Mozza Pizza and PitFire pizza dig back to the culinary roots of the beloved dish in efforts to create a truly authentic pie that breaks away from the conventional models of the big chains.

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Pit Fire Pizza, a “crust you can trust”

Sep 04, 2010

You may remember a couple of months ago when I wrote about Pizza being the “next big thing” in the restaurant industry. Being a native New Yorker and well traveled restaurant consultant, I must admit that there are quite a few things I know about what makes pizza amazing. My partners and I literally travel the nation on our “eating missions” to explore various cuisines from countless restaurants. On my quest to find the best pizza and to hone my pizza palate, I even went as far as spending 6 weeks in Italy starting in Naples (the birthplace of pizza), touring all of Sicily and many of the islands throughout Sardinia.  Needless to say, I have eaten a lot of pizza over the last four decades.

So what makes PitFire pizza so great? Well, it’s a combination of the Ph in the water, they use the right flour and that they cook their pizza in a wood-fired kiln.

If you haven’t noticed, many new pizza concepts are now using solid fuel like charcoal and wood fired pizza. When you hear these terms used to describe pizza, it is referring to the method the pizza is cooked, for example in an oven with burning charcoal or burning wood.

Let’s take a look a new concept I recently visited, Pitfire Artisan Pizza. With a tagline that reads, “the crust you can trust,” I knew I was in for something good. Pitfire Pizza in Los Angeles, bakes their rustic, hand crafted pizzas in wood fire kilns that reaches temperatures of over 900 degrees. And I’ve got to agree, the crust here is amazing! Crispy, fluffy, yet chewey and slightly charred, Pitfire has definitely created a signature memorable pizza crust. Check out the photos:

At Synergy, we believe in the value of perfecting your craft and being known for something special –standing out among the rest. Among many new artisan pizzerias popping up lately, we believe Pitfire has taken on this challenge  quite successfully, ranking very closely to one of my favorite pizza concepts, Mozza Pizzeria. With more and more pizza restaurants concentrating on quality, old-fashioned and authentic techniques and ingredients, the competition is getting fierce!

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Pizza: The Next Big Thing in Casual Eats

Jun 28, 2010

How much more juice does the burger craze have left? Lots, but nothing lasts forever.  My crystal ball says watch out for pizza!  Based on numerous eating missions, Synergy Consultants has sighted a strong emergence of restaurants serving “old world” pizzas that are wood and coal fired.  The cooking style is very similar to what I experienced when I was in Naples, Sardinia and the amazing island of Panaria.

I love a great hamburger and over the last few years I fell like I have eaten some of the best.  Starting on the East coast with Bobby Flay’s Burger Palace, Danny Myers ‘Shake Shake’ , 5 Napkins, Meriden Hotel,  Lettuce Entertain You’s new M Burger,  Burger Bar in Las Vegas,  and Burger Lounge in La Jolla, CA.
M Burger
M Burger
Shake Shack
Shake Shack Menu
Bobby Flay's Burger Palace
Bobby Flay's Burger Palace
I don’t know about you, but I am ready for the next big thing.

So what does that look like?  Well, after eating at Mozza in LA I am betting that the pizza niche is ready to make a move.  What do you think?

Mozza Pizza
Mozza Pizza Photo from LAist.com

Please check out this article for more information:

Burger boom is a ‘bubble,’ expert says

Rosemont, Ill.— The recent upswing in hamburgers is a bubble, foodservice analyst Nancy Kruse said here Wednesday in a presentation covering chain-restaurant menu trends during the Technomic Restaurant Trends & Directions conference.

Kruse told Meatingplace that the “extraordinary uptick in the number of new burger-oriented chains or chain wannabes” is unsustainable, especially considering the QSR burger segment. “I’m surprised that it has continued on as robustly as it has for such a long time,” she said. “I am confident that we’re going to get to a point where we’re going to be at an oversaturation of burger newcomers clashing with an already established competitive set.”

“When [the burger bubble] is going to burst?

Sign up at meatingplace.com to read the rest of the article..